The festival will feature more than 30 films either adapted from or inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, the early 20th century author who specialized in horror and the macabre.

Im really glad that were waking up and shaking out the cobwebs, Martin said.

Martin is no stranger to the Lovecraft Film Festival. Over the years, Martin has made several short films, which have played at the festival, and his first feature film had its world premiere at the cinematic event. In total, Martin has shown eight films there.

His last appearance was in 2009.

All-volunteer outfit

Martins two new films are part of a large collection of short films playing during the three-day festival.

Filmmaking has always been a labor of love for Martin, who makes instructional videos for a Portland software company by day.

Working with an all-volunteer cast and crew, its not uncommon to spend months, or even years, working on a particular project.

That was the case with Blood, one of two films Martin will be showing at this years festival.

Filmed in Estacada, the 8-minute film tells a deceptively simple story, Martin said: A group of pirates regale each other with adventure stories around a campfire one night. Ironically, the film took about three years to complete.

Crews were going to film the project in fall of 2010, Martin said, but it rained the day they were scheduled to get rolling.

It rained the next day, he recalled. And the next day. And the next day.

I swear it rained until July. It just plowed rain for almost a year, he said.

When the weather cleared, and the film was shot, it took another year of editing and post-production work before the film was completed, he said.

Since were a volunteer project, we kept having paid things coming in that we would have to work on, he said.

Martin came up with the idea for the film after writing a short story about a 13th century monk. But after meeting a group of pirate re-enactors from Portland who were looking to make a film, Martin updated the story to the New World at the turn of the 20th century.

With Animo Korvoj, I knew exactly what I wanted, and it was just me, he said. I plowed through it, and it was done in about two weeks.

Using footage of a California ghost town and spoken in Esperanto, the film tells the story of a mining town in the Old West, which uncovers something terrible deep underground.

Just for fun

When Martin was in grade school, he was bitten by the filmmaking bug, and hes never looked back.

He started writing stories in grade school and making short animated films by drawing onto strips of 16mm film.

I was drawing by hand, frame by frame, he said. It was terrible. I was drawing with a sharpie, so the stories were always just the adventures of a big smudge meeting another big smudge.

Martin has spent more than a decade making low-budget films and regularly hosts workshops across the Northwest, teaching aspiring filmmakers how to make their own films in a weekend using the equipment they have on hand.

It started out just for fun, he said.

Although Martin said horror films arent what he gravitates to the most, he has drawn inspiration from Lovecrafts work.

There are a lot of commonalities between what I think of as the universe and what Lovecraft draws on, he said. Its not so much that Im drawn to Lovecraft, its more that it feels like he sees what I see.

Lovecraft stories often use cosmic horror, Martin said.

When Lovecraft describes reality, its as a tiny island in this sea of chaos. There is a brutal coldness of the universe. It has no conscious, and that to me is far more chilling and terrifying  and at the same time relieving. That feels more like reality to me.

The H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival begins Friday, May 3, at the Hollywood Theatre, 4122 N.E. Sandy Blvd., in Portland.